James M. Anderson is chairman of the board of CincyTech. He retired in 2009 from his job as president and CEO of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, which he had held since 1996. He was instrumental in shaping the extraordinary growth at the medical center over those years.

His appointment as president and CEO followed 20 years of service to the Cincinnati Children’s board of trustees, including four years as chairman. Prior to joining the staff of Cincinnati Children’s, he was a partner in the general corporate department at Taft, Stettinius & Hollister and president of U.S. operations at Xomox Corp., a publicly traded manufacturer of specialty process controls.

After serving many years as an independent director, he was appointed chairman of the board of the National Stock Exchange in October 2007. He joined the Board of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in May 2007. In January 2005, Mr. Anderson was appointed chairman of the Board of the Cincinnati Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Further, in July 2005, he was appointed to a national advisory commission that helped identify reforms necessary to stabilize and strengthen the Medicaid system. From 2003–2008, he served on the Ohio Third Frontier Advisory Board, which provides strategic planning for investments administered by the Ohio Third Frontier Commission.

He has held other director or officer positions for numerous corporations, including Gateway Investment Trust, River City Insurance Limited, and the UNIFI Companies. His extensive civic involvement includes service to the Dan Beard Council of the Boy Scouts of America, Cincinnati Museum of Natural History and the College of Mount St. Joseph. In addition to serving on the board of the United Way of Greater Cincinnati, Mr. Anderson served as its 2006 Campaign Chair.

Mr. Anderson is a graduate of Yale University (1963) and Vanderbilt School of Law (1966). He has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America, Who’s Who in America, and Who’s Who in Finance and Industry.

James S. Burns, Executive Chairman of Assurex Health, has more than 30 years of executive experience in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and diagnostic fields.

He has served in leadership roles ranging from commercialization to financial and business development, and general management within businesses ranging from early-stage companies to large multinational corporations, venture capital, and private equity.

Prior to joining Assurex Health, he served as president and CEO of EntreMed, a public clinical-stage pharmaceutical company developing drugs for the treatment of cancer and inflammatory diseases; as president, EVP and a founder of MedPointe Pharmaceuticals, a specialty branded pharmaceutical company; a founder and Managing Director of MedPointe Capital, a private equity firm; president, CEO and a founder of Osiris Therapeutics, a public biotech company specializing in stem cell therapy for the treatment of damaged or diseased tissues; a founding General Partner of HealthCare Ventures LP, a venture capital partnership specializing in forming new pharmaceutical and biotech companies; Group President at Becton Dickinson, a global diagnostic and medical device company; and Partner at Booz Allen Hamilton, a global strategy and technology consultant.

Brian Carley is the President and CEO of the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber.

Throughout his life, all roads have led Brian Carley to Cincinnati.

Born in Chicago, Carley paid for his college tuition at the University of Illinois by selling books door-to-door. Upon his graduation in 1976, he began his career with Arthur Andersen’s Chicago office. Three years later, he transferred to their Cincinnati office, making partner in 1986. He became a Cincinnati office managing partner in 1997 while also overseeing the firm’s global aviation industry practice.

In 2002, he moved to Deloitte’s Cincinnati office, where as a partner he concentrated on audit services to a wide variety of regional companies. Asked to lead the firm’s audit efforts of a large Cleveland company, he moved to that market in 2006, eventually heading up the firm’s audit practice there. Despite the move, he kept his family home in Cincinnati.

In March of 2014, Carley returned to Cincinnati again, becoming the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber’s CEO and President. He is married with four grown children. Three of his children call Cincinnati home.

Robert W. Coy Jr. is president and CEO of CincyTech. He leads a 12-member team that works to drive capital into high-growth companies in Southwest Ohio. He and his team serve a wide range of constituencies – entrepreneurs, investors, economic development partners, research institutions and community stakeholders – in fulfilling CincyTech’s mission of accelerating the growth of start-up bioscience and technology companies. Coy was recruited to Cincinnati in October 2005 from St. Louis, where he served as senior vice president for entrepreneurial development at the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association. He led the development of the St. Louis Arch Angel Investor Network, which invests in early-stage companies in the St. Louis region.

Coy’s career has included in-depth experience in economic development in Pennsylvania and Delaware as well. In Delaware, he held the state cabinet position for economic development from 1993-98, leading initiatives to establish two venture capital funds and a pre-seed fund. In Pennsylvania, his responsibilities included serving as executive director of the Ben Franklin Partnership Program, a national best-practice model. There he oversaw the operations of the state’s four regional technology centers, which make seed capital investment in promising technology companies.

Coy also worked with the Pennsylvania Legislature and pension funds to develop an investment strategy that has resulted in well over $1 billion invested in Pennsylvania-based venture capital funds. Coy also served as special assistant to the Pennsylvania secretary of education from 1992-93.

Coy received a master’s degree from University of Notre Dame and a bachelor of arts degree from Pennsylvania State University.

Jennifer M. Dauer is currently the Senior Vice President, Strategy and Growth at Children’s Hospital. Prior to this, Jennifer spent 26 years with Procter & Gamble, where she most recently served as Vice President/General Manager, Beauty & Grooming New Business Creation and Brand Building. Over her tenure, she had a broad range of experiences across the Health and Beauty Care categories in both developed and emerging markets. In this capacity, she worked to create and implement global business strategies and innovation programs targeting significant organic and new business growth. Prior to her New Business role, Jennifer led several well-known and trusted brands in the consumer products industry, including Venus, Crest, Scope, Pringles and Folgers.

In addition to serving great brands, Jennifer has been fortunate to serve as a senior leader for highly capable organizations around the world, including North America and Europe.

Jennifer received her Bachelors of Arts in Economics and International Relations from Brown University. Jennifer is a wife to Eric and a mother to Eli. Jennifer is very active in the Cincinnati community through Leadership of Cincinnati and The Cincinnati Jewish Federation.

Kay Geiger joined PNC Bank as President, Greater Cincinnati & Northern Kentucky in 2008. As President, Kay has overall client, community and employee responsibilities for the region, which includes over 100 branches and 1,600 employees.

Prior to joining PNC, Kay held executive leadership roles in corporate banking at Bank of America as well as served on the Executive Management Committee for U.S. Bank and has held various senior level roles in its global services, international and corporate banking divisions. In addition, she has successfully led the integration teams for multiple bank acquisitions throughout her financial services career.

Active in the community, Geiger is currently serving as the 2013 Board Chair of the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, and serves on the boards of 3CDC,United Wayof Greater Cincinnati, Cincinnati Business Committee, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center Foundation, Zoological Society of Cincinnati, Ursuline Academy as well as the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s Cincinnati Business Advisory Committee.

In honor of Kay’s community support and professional accomplishments, she has been recognized as a YWCA Career Woman of Achievement, Cincinnati USA Chamber: WE Lead Corporate Woman of the Year, American Jewish Committee Civic Achievement Award Honoree, Girls Scouts of Western Ohio Woman of Distinction as well as one of the Most Powerful and Influential Women in Ohio by the Ohio Diversity Council. Kay is a graduate of Miami University and earned her master’s degree in business administration from The Ohio State University.

Santa Jeremy Ono, PhD is the current President of the University of Cincinnati, one of the nation’s top 25 public research universities. He began his tenure on August 21, 2012.

Before taking on the role of president, Dr. Ono served two years as the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at UC, served at Emory University as Vice Provost for Academic Initiatives, Deputy to the Provost, Senior Vice Provost for Undergraduate Academic Affairs, and Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology. He was also recruited to Harvard Medical School where he was an Associate Professor, on staff at the Schepens Eye Research Institute, a member of the Executive Committee of the Harvard Program in Immunology, a principle investigator of the Harvard Program in Ocular Immunology, and on the Executive Committee of the NIH Training Program in Molecular Bases of Eye Diseases. Prior to his time at Harvard Dr. Ono served as Cumberlege Professor and GlaxoSmithKline Chair of Biomedical Sciences at University College London (UCL) and Moorfields Eye Hospital, head of the Department of Immunology at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, on the executive committee of the UCL Division of Infection and Immunity, Associate Dean of Students, a member of the UCL Council (the university’s governing body) and its finance committee.

Through all of his work, Dr. Ono has been presented with many awards, including; the Brit Katz Award from Emory University, the Roche Laboratories Award for Excellence in Research, the Pharmacia International Award in Allergy Research and the Medal in Bronze from Osaka City University, American Diabetes Association Career Development Award and the Investigator Award from the National Arthritis Foundation at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Dr. Ono earned his PhD at McGill University and his BA at the University of Chicago. His training in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Harvard was supported by a Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Fellowship.

Beyond his current work at the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Ono also sits on the Board of Directors of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Japan-America-Society and the Alois Alzheimer’s Society. He chairs the board of the Global H.E.E.D (Promoting Health, Education and Economic Development) and co-chairs the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Early Grade-Level Reading Campaign. He is an active member of the Chancellor’s Ohio Completion Task Force of the Ohio Board of Regents as well as the Executive Committee of the STRIVE partnership and served on the Board of Advisors for Strive for College. He is also a Professor of Pediatrics within UC’s College of Medicine and Professor of Biology in the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences.

Ellen van der Horst served as president and CEO of the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber from 2006 to 2014. In that role, she led the fifth-largest chamber of commerce in the country, with nearly 6,000 member businesses and a staff of 80 professionals.

A native of Philadelphia, she came to Cincinnati as a young professional, getting her start at Procter & Gamble before establishing a successful 22-year career with The PNC Financial Services Group, most recently as executive vice president and chief marketing officer.

Van der Horst has a long history of service to the community and has served on the boards of the Cincinnati Business Committee, 3CDC, Downtown Cincinnati Inc., the Fine Arts Fund, United Way, OKI, UC College of Business Advisory Council, UC Economics Center for Education & Research and the Queen City Club. For these many contributions and her outstanding accomplishment in business, she has been recognized as a YWCA Career Women of Achievement and in 2008 was named by two Cincinnati-area magazines as one of the region’s most powerful leaders.

Van der Horst earned a bachelor of science degree in economics – summa cum laude – from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.